


chance meetings leading to new chances

by whoopitslup



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:47:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27492967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whoopitslup/pseuds/whoopitslup
Summary: What if Cheese had met Adaine when the Bad Kids were on Leviathan?A pondering on family, both blood and chosen, and anxiety.
Relationships: Adaine Abernant & Cheese Stormcrank, Ayda Aguefort & Cheese Stormcrank
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	chance meetings leading to new chances

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my WIP folder (under the working name Anxiety Buddies) since the end of pirol and I finally got around to finishing it! (possibly because i finished it to put off doing my history paper whoops)

Adaine Abernant walked away from the Gold Gardens. There were too many people, too much talking, just an overwhelming amount of sensations. She meandered through the thickets of trees that made up The Sternwood and soon found herself standing outside of it in a district full of weird cannons. She looked upwards, petting Boggy with one hand, not sure exactly where she was.

Adaine fell to the ground as a small gnomish boy about her age slammed into her, running. His binder went flying, falling open. 

“Oh! Hello! Very sorry, wasn’t looking where I was going, have to get to work!” the boy said quickly, smiling awkwardly.

Adaine sat up. “It’s ok.” She reached over and picked up the binder, with the intent of handing it back to him when its contents caught her eye. She’d tried to avoid looking into binders after being deeply disturbed after an accidental glance into Gorgug’s sex binder, but this boy’s binder looked to have spells in it.

She looked up from the binder back at the boy. “Are you a wizard?”

The boy twisted his hands nervously. “More or less. I’m Cheese. Wait, you don’t know my parents, do you?”

Adaine gave a slight smile, knowing very well what that meant. “I’m Adaine. Parents suck, don’t they?”

Cheese looked around anxiously. “Uh, well…” he trailed off. 

Adaine handed the binder back to Cheese. “I didn’t realize there were any wizard schools here on Leviathan.”

“Oh, there’s not. At least as far as I know.”

“You taught yourself all this?”

“I found some of the spells, at least in pieces.”

Adaine paused. “Do you know Ayda Aguefort?”

“Who?”

“She runs the library here. Plus pretty much everyone in my group has parental troubles, so if you need somewhere to be that isn’t home…”

Cheese stepped back and forth nervously, not replying.

“I’m a wizard too. This is my familiar Boggy, and my parents are also assholes.”

Cheese hesitated then nodded. “Can I come with you?”

Adaine smiled.

Cheese bounced on the balls of his feet. He wasn’t supposed to learn magic; he was supposed to be earning money, but he had met a wizard! A wizard that could maybe teach him more spells! And then… and then maybe he could go find Spaulding. A surge of hope flooded his body, and he smiled.

As they approached the entrance to the Compass Points Library, Cheese grinned. It looked like a place where actual magic books were kept. If Adaine was telling the truth about Ayda, he could maybe learn more actual spells there. He swallowed, suddenly nervous. 

Adaine led him into the back chambers of the library, pausing every so often as Cheese got distracted by the amazing books in languages he didn’t even recognize. There was a tall teenager with very cool wings running her finger over the books on one of the shelves. 

“Hi Ayda!” Adaine greeted her.

“Oh, hello Adaine. I thought you were staying at the Gold Gardens tonight?”

“I am, I just found someone I thought should meet you.”

Ayda turned and looked Cheese up and down.

“This is Cheese,” Adaine said, “He’s a self-taught wizard.”

Ayda raised one eyebrow, “That is rather impressive.”

Cheese mumbled, “Thanks.” He paused, then words tumbled quickly out of his mouth, “I was hoping to learn more magic so I can go save my brother but my parents say I can’t and have to work but I know I can save my brother if I just got the chance.” He glanced down at his feet nervously. 

“Do you not like your parents?” Ayda asked bluntly.

Cheese swallowed. “I mean, they’re my parents.”

“Doesn’t make them good people,” Adaine said, “But I know it’s still hard.”

There was a pause. “So you wish to learn magic from here,” Ayda said.

“Yeah. I learned a lot of things from just like odds and ends of spellbook remnants, but I need to know more to find Spaulding.”

“Spaulding is your brother?” Ayda asked.

“Yeah.”

Adaine jumped momentarily before pulling out her crystal, muttering something, then turning back to Ayda and Cheese. “Sorry, Fig messaged me. I should probably head back to the Gold Gardens. Cheese, do you want to come with me or, Ayda, could he stay with you?” She pulled a face. “I don’t want you to go home if your parents suck.”

Cheese looked nervously back and forth as Ayda said, “You may stay here if you wish.”

Adaine made a face as she glanced back down at her crystal. “Ok, my friends are definitely throwing a rager and at least some of them are drunkenly messaging me.” She clicked off her crystal.

“Uh, I’ll stay here then?” Cheese said nervously.

Ayda nodded as Adaine dashed off before looking at Cheese again. “Are you nervous?”

“W-well, yeah? I mean, you’re, you’re in charge of the library and stuff?”

“I would like to think of us as friends,” Ayda said, turning back to the bookshelf. “And therefore, I would like to help you learn.” She withdrew a book and handed it to Cheese. “Would you accept this spellbook?”

Cheese’s eyes grew wide as he flipped through the book. “You’re just giving this to me?”

“Of course. We are friends, are we not?”

“No, yeah, uh, we are,” Cheese stuttered. “Um, thank you.”

“You are welcome. Now, is there anything else you wish to speak on?”

“No?”

"Fantastic. There is an extra bedroom over there,” Ayda pointed. “Good night.” Ayda turned and walked away.

Cheese lay on the bed, feet kicking in the air, flipping through the spellbook. Holy shit. Apparently his spells had actual names? Like Sparkle Darts was actually called Magic Missile? He liked Sparkle Darts though and resolved to keep calling it that. 

He closed the spellbook and rolled over, staring at the mural of the night sky on the ceiling. He was terrified -- how couldn’t he be in this new place, without his parents, learning new things? -- but he was also ecstatic. He could save Spaulding. He would save Spaulding. He smiled with that resolution, closed his eyes, and was soon asleep.

Adaine wove through the busy streets of Levithan, working her way towards Compass Points. She opened the doors, calling out, “Ayda?”

It was only a few seconds later that Ayda came around a bookshelf and greeted Adaine with a “Good morning.”

“Hi Ayda. Is Cheese ok?”

“He is still in his room. I have given him a spellbook and we are friends now.”

Adaine nodded. “I’m going to go check on him.”

Cheese awoke to a soft knock on the door to the bedroom. He was curled around the spellbook Ayda had given him, and he jolted for a second, first scared of where he was then scared of what his parents would think of him not coming home. He hugged the spellbook a little tighter, then, when the knock sounded again, stood up, rubbing his face, and opened the door.

“Hi Adaine,” he said in a small voice.

“Hi,” she said softly. “You doing ok?”

Cheese gulped. “Uh.”

Adaine smiled sadly. “It was a rather eventful night, yeah?” 

Cheese looked down at his feet and gave a small nod. “My parents… they’re gonna be worried about me.”

“Are they?”

“Spaulding went missing. Not exactly like this, but he was the perfect child and he loved me and my parents loved him and then he vanished and I need to find him.” Cheese took a deep breath and glanced up nervously at Adaine.

“I have an older sister named Aelwyn. She’s the perfect child too, according to my parents. She and my parents left me last year. But I have new friends who believe in me and love me. I’m glad Spaulding was good to you. And I promise we can find him.”

Cheese fidgeted with his overly long sleeves. “Ok.”

“Would you like to meet some of my friends?”

Cheese nodded. “I don’t think I want to leave Levithan yet, though.”

“Ok.”

As they began to walk out of Compass Points, Ayda appeared from around a bookshelf. “Cheese,” she said, “would you like it if your parents could not find you?”

Cheese froze. Would he? They were his parents. But… “Uh. Yeah.”

Adaine smiled.

As Adaine and Cheese began walking towards The Golden Gardens, Adaine reflected on Aelwyn and her parents. Cheese was more or less in the same situation that she had been. It had been nearly a year since she had been abandoned. It still hurt, how could it not? At least Cheese got to be the one doing the abandoning. It was weird, she thought, how much she’d grown in that year. She had Boggy and the Bad Kids now. She had therapy, thank god. And, she smiled ruefully, she had quickly sized up Cheese’s situation as not that much different from her own. And seen that as bad. How had it taken her so long to realize that her own parents were shit. And Aelwyn, well, Aelwyn is still just a kid like her, but also… At least Spaulding seemed better. Adaine hoped he was better. If Cheese had just romanticized his brother… She shook her head. Not really a productive line of thinking. 

Cheese kept nervously glancing up at her as they walked, and Boggy ribbeted comfortingly as her mind spiraled. She took a deep breath, trying to keep herself grounded, trying to keep herself from thinking too much about her parents. It would just hurt her. 

Cheese swallowed. “Your familiar… can you, um, can you teach me how to cast that?”

“Of course,” Adaine said. “Boggy really helps me with my anxiety. We’re almost at The Golden Gardens. I’ll teach you there.”

Cheese smiled. “Thanks.” He was going to do it. He was going to learn magic not just from scraps and finally save his brother.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> Say hi on tumblr, i'm whoopitslup


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